![]() “We’ve always been fascinated with technology that enables us to connect with people,” he says. “The phone directory was an early database that allowed you to access people.” “Think of it as the start of the information age,” explains Middleton. The story merited front-page space next to photos of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Sir Frederick Borden in London and a story about the upcoming coronation of King George V, “the most splendid pageant on which the modern world has looked.” In 1911, the Daily Star ran a Saturday front page story announcing the new Adelaide exchange and the Monday distribution of the up-to-date books “with the greatest possible speed.” The new phone book was eagerly awaited each year. They must not have a phone.’ The unwashed immigrants didn’t have phones.” “There was a bit of class snobbery,” says Alan Middleton, marketing professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business. A breezy, “Call me - I’m in the book” had a certain ring to it. Back then, a name in the phone book was a tangible sign of prestige, of being wealthy enough to afford a telephone. The telephone directory of 1904, the oldest hard copy at the Toronto Reference Library, had grown to 276 pages with 11,627 home and business listings. With a keen eye for self-promotion, Bingham & Taylor, “fine printers, 11 Leader Lane,” issued the directory with large ads on each page. Toronto’s first in 1879, a mere three years after the invention of the telephone, had 56 business and residential names and addresses, including George Brown and Oliver Mowat, on six pages. The last delivered Toronto white pages, 2008-2010, weighed in with 1,413 pages of residential listings. “One of my happiest moments was when I got my first apartment and there in the phone book was my name in print.” “Who doesn’t look up their name?” laughs Christine Elias, a communications director at the University of Toronto. Others not only use the phone book, they’re actually nostalgic about it. ![]() “All that printed stuff just goes to waste. “The last time was maybe four or five years ago,” he says. Sitting in a downtown food court with a BlackBerry and an Internet tablet in front of him, Jarek Piorkowski, 22, looks momentarily baffled when asked about his use of the telephone book. Less than 2 per cent of customers requested a directory in the off years. Starting in 2006, Marsolais points out, delivery went from yearly to every other year, with little consumer outcry. Such approval has already been granted to distributors in four states. Earlier in May, Verizon, the largest phone company in New York State, also asked regulators for permission to end mass delivery. Consumers can ask for the 2010 ones by calling 1-80 or by visiting ypg.com/delivery about 60,000 printed copies are presently in storage. But those who want them need to request them. “Our industry is evolving and we have to adapt,” says Marsolais.Ībout 5 per cent of the normal run of home phone books will be printed. Some cellphone users no longer bother with a landline and aren’t listed in any directory. More consumers are letting their fingers do the scrolling, searching online for home phone numbers or storing them on their cellphones, she explains. The CRTC ruling is expected in a couple of months, she says. The requested change would save 35 metric tons of paper every year, says Annie Marsolais, communications director for Yellow Pages Group. The phone book for businesses, the yellow pages, is still slated for door-to-door delivery. In those cities, home and business listings are in separate directories. The Yellow Pages Group, Canada’s leading provider of print and online directories, has asked the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to no longer require mass distribution of the residential listings phone book in seven big cities, including Toronto. While once upon a time newspapers heralded the book’s annual arrival, marvelling at its expanding girth, a measure of a city’s growth and wealth, today Toronto’s home telephone book may well be out of service, as passé as rotary dial. The publisher got 1,000 requests for the absent 2010 directory - that’s out of more than a million households and drop-offs that would have gotten it. “Geez, I didn’t even notice,” said Heather Missouri, a customs consultant. The telephone book white pages - a household icon started in 1879 that not only enabled Torontonians to find each other, but also propped open doors, kindled fires and boosted small fry - was not delivered. No youngsters thumbing through to find their families’ names. No pile of thick books by the building’s mailboxes. There was no familiar thump on Toronto front porches and or in apartment building lobbies this spring.
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